London in the Morning
by sierrac
Summary: Sequel to 'Haxby in the Afternoon.' Mary and Richard arrive in London, but with the Crawleys hot on their heels and their own plans uncertain, is the future as bright as it seems?
1. Beginnings

**AN: At long last, here is the start to my 'Haxby in the Afternoon' sequel. I should say that I normally don't post stories until they are complete, which makes it so that I can do regular updates. But in this case the story is nowhere near to done yet, and I can promise the updates will be far less frequent... so please bear with me! (My idea is that by publishing chapter one, it will force me to actually finish the story rather than letting it sit in my work-in-progress folder forever.) Hope you enjoy!**

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**1. Beginnings**

It was the dazzling lights of the Strand that woke Mary up from her slumber as the blue coupe pulled up to the side of the Savoy hotel well after midnight – the drive had taken longer than expected, and she had fallen asleep against Richard's shoulder sometime around Leicester. But the flashing of the billboards as they drove into London brought her back to reality – if one could call it that, for this part of the city always struck her as a kind of fantasy land, a world where giant illuminated lotion bottles competed for attention with the twenty-foot tall faces of West End stars. It was a carnival in a half-remembered dream, and for a moment she was unsure whether she was awake or not.

They had left Haxby earlier in the evening without a second glance back, in what Mary was certain was a high-speed pursuit, like the kind in one of those Keystone Kops moving pictures. She could imagine the scene so clearly: Matthew returning to the estate after dark with Papa in tow and discovering the half-renovated house empty; the puzzled speculation, the recounting of the afternoon's fistfight. Then, realization and horror! Cue frantic, fast-forward running to the car, wild gesticulating; the Crawley men would jump in the vehicle and instruct the new chauffeur to make haste for London, because the family's eldest daughter had been kidnapped by the nefarious newspaperman.

But by the time they stopped for petrol and a bite to eat at a pub by the road, the fears that flickered through her head in comic fast-motion black and white had been put to rest by a telephone call to Anna – dinner had yet to be served and no one seemed to know she was even gone. Mary intended to keep it that way and told Anna to say she was ill and in bed, not to be disturbed. She still worried – after all, it was suspicious for her to not appear for dinner or breakfast, and anyone could try to check up on her only to find her room vacant. But she hoped the flimsy excuse would buy them at least a morning's head start. It was all rather familiar, after Sybil's attempt at elopement, and Mary was surprised to find herself in the same position. Though at this point, the family would probably accept the valet or the head gardener over Richard Carlisle, so she told herself it was simply easier this way.

What a reversal: now she was the rebellious one, the irresponsible one, the one running away to a new life. Mary had always acted that part, but in truth she did never once believed it - she was content enough with tradition if it meant she got what she felt she was owed. And her politics may land more with Sybil's than with the elder generation, but the only party she supported was herself.

Now she found herself copying her younger sister, venturing down the very path she had gone to great lengths to stop Sybil from taking. Mary was sure they would have a good laugh about it, sometime in the future. Although whether that laugh would be over tea in the drawing room of Downton remained to be seen, for perhaps neither girl would be allowed back due to their choice of a new life with unsuitable people over the old life and tradition.

They both looked forward to their respective new adventures, though in Mary's opinion Sybil's choice was far beneath what she was worthy of, living with a former servant in his mother's cottage in Ireland. In a way that was the family life Mary was escaping: evening bridge with the mother-in-law, afternoon tea with the vicar, garden gossip with the neighbors. Mary could no longer begrudge her sister the right to make up her own mind; yet she could not help but feel the Crawley girls were too intelligent and sophisticated for that, and it saddened her that Sybil had traded her feminist ambitions for the dreariness of domesticity. Mary was not about to make that mistake.

She and Richard both had always fancied themselves above the silly ideal of domestic bliss, at least as defined by ever-waning Victorian propaganda still embraced by many of their peers. It was one of the things they had in common when they first met at Cliveden, sharing a mutual disdain for the unending smugness with which one of Mary's fellow debutants spoke of the rural idyll she and her new husband were about to build. "Imagine the two of them," she had whispered in Richard's ear during an especially gushy description of the magnificent sheep and cows that would be the couple's new neighbors, "in the middle of a field, with nothing but each other and the livestock for company."

"At least the hunting rifles would come in handy, and I don't mean for the animals," had been his droll reply.

Richard's proposal to her, then, was not merely shunning love in favor of a business accord between two sharp and strong parties, but shedding the traditional expectations of what marriage could be. They would be partners in a joint venture, beyond the bourgeois sedative of romance novel nonsense, and Mary felt she could define for herself what exactly that arrangement would mean.

For she was smart enough to know that the happily-ever-after of romance novels was often a dead end, at least for her gender. But Richard was not a happily-ever-after sort of person, and she liked that about him. His ambition was limitless, and she doubted he believed in endings at all, his life being the continual pursuit of the next goal. And while Mary may not be out on the streets with a placard demanding liberation, she did have her own ambitions, and she was also smart enough to see there was far more power in hosting a London dinner party than a country play date.

Haxby had been the peculiar aberration in this otherwise solid outlook, and Mary concluded they both had faltered. She, because she had not been ready to admit what she wanted her life to be; and Richard, because he had been so eager for a life with her that he cast off his own ambitions. But now Haxby was behind them, hundreds of miles in the rearview mirror, and London was ahead in its chaos and glory. It was a new beginning, but it was also a return. London could bring them back to who they were; who they were meant to be, before war and history and compromise got in the way.

Her worry that her family was hot on their heels allayed, she nevertheless wondered as they resumed their drive whether Matthew would be suspicious. After all, he knew exactly where she had spent the afternoon and with whom, and perhaps Anna's tale of illness would sound implausible to his ears. But it was out of her control. The storm was coming, Mary supposed, so it did not really matter if it arrived sooner or later. That did not stop her from a having a nightmare as soon as she fell asleep of being greeted upon their arrival in town by several generations of Crawleys going back to the middle ages, posed artificially in rows on either side of Richard's front door as if they were taking a family photograph, all with chins upturned in unwavering disapproval.

But as they drove past the bright lights of the main entrance of the hotel, turning off the Strand to a hidden side door on the alley, Mary began to drift back to the wakeful world. Here there were no garish billboards, no carnival-style faces, no disappointed relatives with the exaggerated features of the landed gentry; simply sedate street lamps running down to the Thames and a lone brass door under a red awning, guarded by a doorman in a crisp black uniform. It was the antithesis of any greeting she was used to, and Mary marveled at how different this was to the grand arrival at a country house: a single hotel valet substituted for an entire household's staff fanned out in welcome to the new arrivals.

Then again, London was very different than the country, and amidst the bustle and garishness of the city, the humble entrance had its own discreet grandeur. It was like a secret, visible only to those keen enough to look past the spectacle, its ostentation somehow enhanced by its intentionally subtle appearance.

This part of the hotel was not for guests drawn in by spectacle; in fact, it seemed designed specifically to put them off. The single doorman guarding the single door was actually for residents of the grand apartments perched on top of the Savoy, all of whom demanded a quiet entrance and a quiet street. Their flats occupied the rooftops; in the country, that was for the servants, but then London was upside down anyway. Sarah Bernhardt was one of those residents; so was Sir Thomas Dewar, the whiskey baron; and so was Sir Richard Carlisle. Now, Mary mused as the car came to a jolting halt at the curb, the list would include her too.

"Good evening, Sir Richard," the doorman said as he approached and opened her side of the door, "milady." She couldn't contain a blush as she alighted from the coupe; how unseemly to be accompanying Richard home at this hour, long after midnight. But the doorman's expression did not falter in the slightest, a steady professionalism governing his reaction if he was shocked. That was worse, Mary realized, hoping he _was _shocked – unless of course this was a regular occurrence. She knew very little about Richard's personal life before he met her; perhaps he was accustomed to late-night female visitors and the doorman was some sort of accomplice.

"Hello, Benin," Richard said smoothly as he grabbed his weekend bag from the backseat and handed the valet the keys, following Mary into the small lobby. A bit too smoothly?, she wondered, considering his unperturbed manner as the doubts she had been suppressing in the back of her mind rose to the surface with the inevitability of bubbles in a slowly boiling kettle.

The truth was, she had not really thought this through. Just four days ago she had told Richard she never wanted to see him again; her whole family was witness to that. And now she had run off with him, in the middle of the night, without so much as a handbag or a change of clothes. She had wanted a fresh start, she thought ruefully; well, that was what she was getting.

Their encounter at Haxby earlier that day had changed her life, in a most dramatic way. Mary never would have thought a few hours could have such an impact, but that was all it took to win her over. No, she corrected herself, that was not true; it was more like two years of Richard trying to win her over. Failing, sometimes miserably, yet even then he had clawed his way into her heart and now she was the one who did not want to let go. She had made her mind up before she even set foot in Haxby, she told herself, despite her protests and doubts. So why hadn't she the foresight to have Anna pack a trunk?

Her lot was never very good with abrupt change. Which is why she was currently examining her own mind as she would assess a stranger at a first meeting, with the curiosity and suspicion with which one greeted all foreign agents. The speculation ran rampant - perhaps her feet had carried her to Haxby that afternoon not because it was what she wanted, but because she could not stay away. Perhaps she was in London now because she was afraid of a future at Downton, not because she was rejecting it. Perhaps they were not in London at all, but some strange alternate universe where opulence was understatement and the elite lived in the attic while the servants lived on the ground and she did not know where she belonged. Worst of all, perhaps her passionate twilight with Richard in the basement of Haxby had been just a dream, as distant and nonsensical as the marquee faces of Piccadilly, or the Crawley ancestors that seemed to haunt her unconscious thoughts and whom they would never be able to outrun.

There was no going back from this, she thought as Richard wordlessly pressed the elevator call button in the building's tiny lobby. She could explain spending the afternoon at Haxby as some sort of final parting, at least to her family. And she had no idea what Richard's reaction would have been had she chosen to return to Downton instead of leaving with him, but she was clever enough to have gotten out of it if she wished. She could even justify driving with him to London, if only she ended up anywhere but here. But actually going home with him, to his apartment, in the middle of the night? No, there was no explaining that, to anyone. Part of her wanted to flee out to the Strand, hail a taxi and go straight to Aunt Rosmaund's; her virtue may not be intact but at least her fate would not be sealed.

Yet as the elevator arrived and the operator pulled back the brass accordion door for her to pass through, Richard's hand found her elbow and gave her a reassuring squeeze. She looked up into his dimmed blue eyes, her mind still foggy from sleep and dazed by this surreal world she was entering, and she realized they were not so far apart. He looked as tired as she was, from driving all night, from their endless talking all day. In fact, he looked endearingly exhausted as he stifled a yawn, and the part of her that could not bear to be apart from him won easily over the part that wanted to run – if she ran, she would not get to tumble into the pillows next to him and indulge in the first peaceful rest she'd had since Christmas, since Lavinia's funeral, since she first met the intriguing Sir Richard Carlisle so long ago and thought how very much she would like to fall asleep secure in the knowledge that she would awake to his tender gaze in the morning.

No, there was no going back from this. She was already too far gone.


	2. Apartments

**AN: Apologies for the long intermission between the last chapter and this one – life can get crazy! But hopefully these two chapters together will do for now.**

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**2. Apartments**

There was no entry hall.

That was what struck Mary the first time she entered Richard's flat. Victorian row houses, country manors, ordinary cottages – they all had entry halls. But not here. The tall double doors, painted ink black in a matte finish with massive octagonal brushed brass handles, opened straight into the gracious living room; the only vestibule to speak of was the small area where two steps led up from the doors to the rest of the room. It was the pinnacle of informality, she had thought upon first sight, and she was not sure whether she liked it.

Where were guests supposed to wait while they were announced?, she had asked herself at the time, an innocuous enquiry, but one that carried tremendous implications for the kind of life that was to be lived in this home. The kind of life _she_ was to live in this home. Though at this point she had to laugh silently to herself: no one would be announcing her arrival now, at two in the morning, creeping into Richard's apartment not as a guest but as – what? A lover? Mistress? Not-quite fiancé yet certainly future wife? Though perhaps they had no need of labels by this point, just as her new home had no need of an entry hall.

"What's funny?" Richard asked conspiratorially at her half-mirthful smile as he unlocked the front door, no butler or valet there to open it for them.

"What _isn'_t funny?" she replied, sweeping through the door and up the two steps into the main room. Richard followed, dropping his weekend bag by the stairs, its thud muted by the deep carpet just as the clank of the shut door was muted by the slow-close mechanism and the buzz of the electric lights being turned on was muted by the noiseless dimmer switch. There were no echoes here, no creak of old floorboards or shutters banging from draft. "It's quieter here in the middle of the city than on the stillest night in Yorkshire," Mary continued, picking one irony out of many to illustrate her amusement.

"All the better for us to sneak around," Richard said with a smirk.

The room itself was long and wide; grand, in its way, though nothing compared to country house standards. The vast, plain ceiling was fairly low given its proportions, lending the room the more intimate feel of a lounge, or, Mary had thought critically at first, a department store. But unlike the double height rooms of Haxby, she realized, a secret could be whispered here without reverberating throughout the house - ideal for a man who traded in the information of others and required privacy for himself.

The pillar-less room seemed to go on forever in both directions, the longest wall taken up by rows of glass doors that stretched right up to the ceiling, the square windowpanes mimicking the grid of the city that lay sparkling in the distance beyond the terrace outside. The other two walls were clad in massive blocks of striated grey sandstone which reiterated the grid once more, affixed to the wall with small brass octagon pins that recalled the handles of the entrance, and every doorknob after that.

The effect was of a very deliberate room. Unlike Downton, with its timeworn, carefully mismatched furniture arranged to give the impression of bohemianism, the flat was very finished. Not that things were placed just so to the point of fastidiousness, but that everything cohered into a single impression, one of modernity and restraint. It should feel oppressive, but it did not. The room simply felt quite lush, for all its simplicity, the attention to detail and material offsetting the minimalism of the cool geometry.

"Change anything you like," Richard's voice invaded her consciousness as Mary surveyed the room. It was not her first visit to the apartment, but it was her first time seeing it as her own. "If you hate it," he amended.

"I don't hate it," she replied.

Because this was not a house for entry halls, where ladies paid polite afternoon visits, leaving their calling cards to collect on a tray on the front table - there was no front table. This was a house for an endless flow of people, for revelers to sweep in, grabbing a cocktail on their way to greet friends on the terrace, or to find themselves pulled immediately into a dance by a stranger taken by the jazz beat on the piano. On more sedate evenings it was a house for relaxed posture and conversation, drawing guests into the room without a second glance backwards or a thought to the formality of traditional greeting as the host and hostess reclined on low-slung sofas, expecting their new company to join them in leisure. And on quiet nights, like tonight, it was a house for two, the sparkling city in the distance the only reception either needed upon their return home.

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In fact, Mary did not hate the flat the first time she saw it, either, though she had been expecting to dislike it intensely. The idea that she was being courted by a man who lived in an _apartment_ was most abhorrent to her sensibilities. Not only that, but she had wondered at the time what she could contribute to the marriage if they were to live in such a modern way – she had been raised to preside over a grand house, and she hadn't the slightest idea how she could apply those skills to running a more limited household in a hotel.

They had discussed it on Richard's frequent visits to Downton after he had proposed, a time when he returned every weekend in hopes of an answer. Apartment or not, Mary had made up mind to accept, but she could not bring herself to tell him. His stunt writing to her father to force her hand only made her delay longer, and he looked at her with such eagerness – the same look she received from those twenty-year-olds she used to toy with before the war – that it reminded her of carefree times she was not quite ready to give up.

"I've never met anyone who lived in a flat," she said on one such weekend as they strolled through the estate's outer gardens, at the edge of the lawn where formality gave way to wilderness. "I can't fathom it. All the things you must rely on – elevators, and electricity."

"You've managed to do quite well without that here," he commented dryly, alluding to the recent storm that had blacked out the house's power, forcing them to return to candlelight for two long weeks.

"We have electricity," Mary protested. "Finally. Sometimes…"

"You'd be amazed how easy it is to get used to the finer things in life, like lifts and light bulbs."

"I don't doubt it," she replied. "But living with people on either side of the wall from you. Strangers!"

"I think you're forgetting the two dozen or so people that you share Downton with, scurrying behind the walls to open the drapes and serve your tea," Richard reminded her.

"There's a difference between neighbors and servants."

Her remark sounded so much like something Granny would say that, in her surprise at the foreign voice emerging from her own mouth, she nearly let a rut in the rugged ground trip her up. Richard caught her arm at her stumble, and she quickly pulled out of his grasp in a stubborn rejection of the city dweller's aid in her native countryside. "And you have no garden!" she cried, moving on, pity evident in her voice at his plight.

He chuckled at her misdirected sympathy. "I have several terraces. They may not be wild pastures with horses and grain, but the view isn't bad."

"Stone terraces are hardly sufficient when one is accustomed to grass."

She looked back at him where he had paused to kick some mud off his shoe, wearing a vexed expression as he regarded the offending dirt with distaste. "You'd be amazed how easy it is to get used to the finer things in life," she echoed with a raised eyebrow.

His annoyed glower brightened, pleasantly surprised as she recalled his words. "Perhaps you're right," he allowed. "You may know someone who lives in a flat," he added as he caught up alongside her, returning to her earlier remark. "Aside from me, of course. Do you know Sir Thomas Dewar?"

Mary thought for a moment as they continued to walk. "The whiskey distiller?" At her companion's affirmative nod: "We've met a few times, at various dinners and so on. I seem to recall a rather enthusiastic introduction by Lady Talitha Fairbanks; although I was never sure if it was because she thought she was making a match, or ridding herself of a colossal bore."

"He _can be_ resolutely plodding in his anecdotes," Richard conceded, "and I wouldn't normally say that of a fellow Scotsman." Both seemed to consider their separate encounters with the Sir Thomas briefly, Mary's eyes going blank in recollection of the tedium of a particularly lengthy story about Sir Thomas's voyage to Australia and his persistent runny nose. By the end of the evening she believed she knew more of his medical condition than his doctor.

"And this is the man you select to recommend apartment living?" she asked skeptically.

"Not exactly. But he is a neighbor of mine, and he is giving a party next week in honor of his new blend. Perhaps you would like to accompany me – you can see a hotel flat for yourself, and we can avoid him together."

* * *

Mary had agreed, her curiosity getting the better of her and Richard's squinting smile in the sunlight perhaps influencing her choice as well. She wanted to see if he had quite the same vaguely annoyed expression in the city as he wore on their country walks, as if each particle of nature were an affront to his hard-won civilization.

So she had arranged to attend the party with Lady Talitha and her husband, two acceptable chaperones who were well-acquainted with London's smart set – even those who lived in apartments. And though Mary had no idea what to expect, she got an idea when she and Talitha departed the quiet civility of Harrods' for the cacophony of Richard's part of the city. They turned off the main road, yet the bright and blinking lights of the Strand seemed to continue down the private drive of the hotel, right to the front door, and she could scarcely imagine a more garish approach to a home.

Aunt Rosamund's chauffeur had dropped them at the Savoy's glittering main entrance by accident, an error Talitha had not rectified because she was certain she knew a shortcut to the residences' elevators hidden off the lobby. As a result, the two women had wandered the ground floor from the restaurant to the bar several times in search of the correct lift, and Mary was already in a fit of pique even before she failed to reach Richard on the house telephone. Apartments were not off to a good start in her estimation.

Finally Mary surrendered and asked the front desk to direct them. A bellboy then escorted them to a back door veiled between two ferns behind the cigarette counter – this too was a bad sign, and Mary half expected to find herself in the laundry or the boiler room after such an inelegant entrance. However, the door led only to a small lobby with two brass-paneled sets of elevator doors, each with intricately designed half circles above and a needle to indicate which floor they were on. She saw that both elevators were currently on the fourteenth floor, so she pushed the call button and wondered how safe such a device really was that far up.

As they waited, she took in the environment – the little lobby was tiny by any standards, perhaps the size of a small bedroom at Downton. The materials were rich; from the thick red carpet to the diamond pattern of the marquetry wood paneling to the crystal of the chandelier that clung flush to the low ceiling. But it was not a space for lingering; it was barely a space for arriving. How peculiar, she thought as the elevator appeared and the boy took them up to the top of the building with alarming speed.

"I know what you're thinking," Talitha said with her usual insight as they ascended. "Shouldn't you be enjoying the peace of the country instead of this nonsense?"

"Exactly," Mary replied, not so much a retort as a sincere agreement.

Mary always liked Talitha, more than most people in their London set. She was intelligent and unafraid to hide it; beyond that, she refused to waste her time with the petty diversions of society gossip. Ten years her senior, the innately stylish woman was the daughter of a merchant banker who had been knighted for his trouble, and she had married far above this station to Lord John Fairbanks, Earl of Ashby, whom she affectionately called Ash. Putting her prodigious talents and intelligence to good use, Talitha was a well-known London figure, serving as a sort of fixer, as Mary understood it, arranging introductions and brokering deals in an informal manner. It was an open secret that most major deals that went on in the British Empire's financial world originated at Lady Ashby's dinner table. The couple was then compensated by preferential stock options, which is how they ended up with such a large stake in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. It may also explain Talitha's passion for all things Asia, including tonight's daring Chinese-inspired frock.

"Just keep in mind that Sir Thomas is a bad example," Talitha warned when they had arrived at his wide-open front doors. "Though perhaps not much worse than those country bores you have to entertain at Downton." Mary had to admit this was true; the Crawleys had to import guests from London in order to have a proper party, and the rest of the time they were relegated to entertaining the unglamorous and generally elderly Yorkshire elite. So perhaps London would not be so bad in comparison.

Still, she entered the flat with trepidation, already disliking the casual entrance and the type of guest, all crowded packed in to the small space of the living room so it was difficult to see the flat beyond the people. Appraising the crowd, she glanced around for Richard but did not see his tall frame in the din.

"These bachelor's parties are always useless," Talitha observed as she too looked over the diverse groups of people, "no one to make introductions, no one to keep people mingling. The only thing that's properly managed is the liquor!"

Nearly everyone had a glass of whiskey in their hand. "No surprise," said Mary, "given this particular bachelor's profession."

"I'm just about ready to hire myself out as hostess – I'd probably do better than Ash with his banks, and goodness knows I do it anyway. I might as well be compensated," Talitha joked as she waved across the room to someone she knew. "The perfect example," she continued, indicating a footman circulating with hors d'oeuvres. "He is walking around with one canapé left on that enormous platter. Pardon me," she called, beckoning the man over, "you really should restock your tray – no one would be rude enough to take the last bite." The footman murmured an apology and dashed off down the hallway to follow the order. "You see? I've no idea how Dewar manages anything at all."

"And here he comes," Mary said in a stage whisper as Sir Thomas approached, his comical mustache unmistakable, extending beyond the border of his face and taking over the room in a way the man wished his personality might someday achieve. There were happy greetings all around, before Dewar immediately launched into a detailed explanation of the distillation process of his new product, his thick Scottish accent an almost comical imitation of a real one. Mary wondered if he exaggerated it, for marketing purposes, and resolved to ask Richard about it should he ever appear.

As the whiskey baron talked, Mary took the opportunity to examine her surroundings; at least, what she could see beyond the many people. And the only word she could come up with in response was 'ghastly.' Dewar's apartment was so ghastly she could scarcely believe it, the textbook definition of home décor errors. There appeared to be many rooms, but they were small and boxy, and to add to the cramped feeling the ceiling was low, feeling like it descended on the partygoers in ever increasing intervals with each sip of drink. The apartment was plain – flat walls and flat ceilings with no moldings or embellishment whatsoever. Worst of all was Dewar's Victorian imitation furniture, the dark carved mahogany and red velvet a true crime against good taste, even twenty years ago when the style was in vogue. Now it merely pointed up the dreariness of the rest of the room, like a gilt picture frame around a photograph of a tenement. If this was the kind of environment Richard flourished in, then Mary was apt to reconsider his proposal. No amount of money or power could compensate for living like this.

Lady Talitha nodded and smiled at one of Dewar's unfunny jokes, and Mary could see her eyes scanning the room for potential exit strategies; neither girl had to look far as Richard appeared behind Dewar, putting a temporary halt to the man's interminable monologue.

"Forgive me," Richard said as he grasped her hand in greeting, "I just found out you arrived. I was down looking for you in the lobby, thinking perhaps my directions were not as clear as they should have been."

"Indeed they were not," Mary replied, relieved to see him and thinking his rather fetching appearance in evening clothes improved the aesthetics of the room enormously. "But a kind front desk manager guided me in my quest."

"I'm glad you didn't give up," he said low in her ear as he came up beside her.

"I haven't yet," she commented, letting her eyes drift past his dapper evening attire to the unpleasant yellow-beige walls of the claustrophobic room. "But that doesn't mean I won't," she said with a smirk.


	3. Terraces

**3. Terraces**

"But in Shanghai, you see," Sir Thomas continued at length, "they don't believe in _grains_!" He slapped his thigh at his joke about the Chinese stock market, perhaps to fill the silence in the absence of laughter from his helpless audience.

"It's a wonder you survived," Richard commented as he took Mary's arm, "but if you'll excuse us –"

"Now wait just a minute!" Dewar replied, his corpulent frame blocking their exit from the small hallway they had somehow managed to get trapped in. "You haven't heard the best part."

Mary could not help her eyes from widening slightly in exasperation; in retrospect, she hoped Dewar would not mistake this for interest. "There I was," he kept going, "sick as a dog, when –"

"You resolved to not drink your own swill ever again," said Lord Ashby as he joined their gathering, though Mary thought of it more as heroically throwing himself on the fire. They all laughed exceptionally at this comment, and Sir Thomas looked most dissatisfied with the shifting spotlight. "But that's what happens when you try to sell the stuff we would not dare drink in England to the colonies, isn't it Thomas?" he asked with a hearty slap to the other man's back. The barb was so good-natured, Dewar could hardly take issue with it; at the same time, the thinly veiled insult was enough to render him temporarily speechless. Lady Ashby seized the opportunity to launch into her own story about Shanghai, which she intentionally made as boring and unfocused as possible.

"...And they have the most adorable little leashes in this red leather - well, was it leather? It's a kind of patent, I suppose, though it looks as shiny as those red lacquer boxes they make. Oh, I found the most delicious lacquer boxes in the night market, all stacked on top of one another in this tremendous pile - but where was I? I do lose track... The dogs! Well to make a long story short -"

No longer the center of wearied attention, Dewar drifted off to fascinate another group with his tales of adventure; Talitha cut off her meaningless anecdote mid-sentence as soon as he was out of earshot. They all tittered softly at their conspiracy to drive the man away.

"Did you read his book?" asked Lord Ashby after proper greetings had been exchanged at late his arrival. He was a heavy-set man, and older, yet he seemed jovial enough from the times Mary had met him. His middling appearance seemed hardly worth commenting on, he was so average a person; but then, that was the point, for he made Talitha shine all the more.

"I have not had that pleasure," Mary replied, though she had indeed heard of Sir Thomas's travelogue of his promotional trip around the world, and felt this evening's preview was enough to dissuade her.

"Lucky you," Richard snorted. "He handed me a copy personally, explaining he published his travel journals because his friends wanted to know, quote, 'all about it.' So far, no one I've met has owned up to such a demand."

"It wasn't me," Ash said, holding his hands aloft in defense. "Though whatever careless person did say it has made the rest of us suffer unduly."

"Worse, he asks you about your favorite part," Richard said. "I just say 'India.'"

"You'd better not!" cried Talitha. "That's what I say!"

"Oh no. I say 'Bombay,'" replied John. "Do you think he's under the misimpression we are all spellbound at his perspective about the subcontinent? You know he told me he's going back next year."

"My God," said Richard. "A sequel."

"Let's not mention that word," Talitha said in horror, "I can't think of anything worse." They all took a sip of whiskey at the same time, the prospect of having to read yet another Sir Thomas memoir requiring nothing less.

"Worse than this party, you mean?" John asked, taking another long drink to emphasize his point. Around them, people stayed clumped in the same groups they arrived, and none of the revelers seemed to be having a very great time. "At least the whiskey works," he added ruefully.

"If you're trying to win Mary over," Talitha said to Richard after appraising the room herself, "I don't think a Dewar party is the ideal venue." As she talked, a joylessly drunken man hurtled past their little gathering in the direction of the bar. "Unless of course your goal is to highlight how pathetic the bachelor apartment life can be and how desperately you need her rescue."

Richard grinned almost sheepishly. "Dewar may be beyond help, but I hope I'm not," he said, looking at Mary with affectionate amusement, before returning his gaze to Talitha. "Actually, Lady Mary told me she has never known anyone who lived in an apartment before, so I wanted to give her a preview of life in the twentieth century."

"If this is anything to go by, I'm beginning to prefer the nineteenth," Mary replied.

"You mean you haven't seen his flat?" Talitha asked with an incredulous shake of her head, a strand of blond hair detaching from her coif and landing in her eyes in a delightfully careless manner. "Richard you must show us immediately. Mr. Hoffmann did the most wonderful job."

"Josef Hoffman, the architect," Richard explained to her. "A friend from a brief spell in Austria."

"And so modern," commented Lord Ashby, "I don't know how you stand it."

"I suspect the world is tilting more in Richard's direction than yours," Mary said, "and we'll all have to get used to a little modernity." Richard looked unduly pleased at her remark, and relented to take them down the hall to show off his modern version of a palace. Mary admitted she was quite happy with the arrangement; after seeing Sir Thomas's living arrangements she was beside herself with curiosity as to her future fiancé's quarters, and the presence of the Ashbys as chaperones was the perfect way to investigate.

They wandered out the front door, the noisy chatter and laughter fading as they got further down the long and sparsely populated hallway. Richard lived at the other end of the building, in flat number one – of course, Mary said to herself – though there seemed to be no other doors between those clustered on Dewar's side and Richard's, and she wondered just how many flats there were in total.

As Richard turned the key in the lock, she noticed that the black wooden double doors were the same as Dewar's apartment. But as soon as the door was opened, she saw the exterior was where the similarities ended.

Upon entering, Mary found herself absorbed in a different world that had nothing to do with gauche whiskey barons or dizzying marquees. The muted greys, the careful geometry, the soft carpet, the glimmer of gold – it was all-enveloping. Once inside, it was difficult to imagine anything outside; the room instantly incorporated its visitors and made them feel at home.

That was most startling to Mary: she felt at home. It was nothing like what she was used to, but somehow it seemed exactly where she should be. In the first minute she could already envision herself sprawling on the sofa, floating across the floor. True, it was not in the style she would have selected, but in a way that was what made it all the more alluring.

The color palette, for example. Grey had never been Mary's favorite, but the entire room was fuming with it like the many different trails of smoke in a cigar lounge, and she was fascinated by how the endless shades and textures of this usually dull hue joined together to create a single atmosphere. There was velvet and linen, wool and silk, all in the most indulgent sable tones and offset by black and white. How perfect, she realized: black and white and gray, just like a newspaper. And sprinkled everywhere were shocks of gold, which she likened to the glint in Richard's eye at that very moment as he ignored their surroundings and looked only at her with a barely-contained fascination at her reaction.

"Isn't it spectacular?" Talitha asked as she pointed out several details across the room and floated to the terrace doors. "I've hired Mr. Hoffmann for Ash's office, and we couldn't be more thrilled."

"We? Don't you mean you?" Lord Ashby countered, his bushy eyebrows creeping up his forehead. "She spends five minutes in my office and decides it is utterly unsuitable," he told Mary with a wink.

"Come see the view!" Talitha called as she walked to the terrace doors. Richard, who had been oddly quiet, let his hand come to rest on Mary's back and gestured for her walk ahead. He seemed stiff, not at all relaxed as he had been earlier when they joked and bantered at the party. It was like his home turf had somehow brought _her_ the advantage.

"We have trees," Ash said to Richard as he looked over the stone railing to the Thames and St. Paul's and Westminster and the lights of the distant South Bank, "but you have London." Here on the back side of the hotel, the flashing billboards of the Strand were not visible and the traffic could not be heard. It was almost peaceful.

"The lights in the distance are a nice touch," Mary agreed, the brisk early spring breeze brushing her face and the nighttime and distance blurring the grit and grime of London. "Almost like the stars one can see in the country sky."

"So you see," Richard said finally, "not all bad." Mary could not fully see his face in the half-light, but his tone made her heart beat a little faster; he so obviously cared what she thought.

They stood admiring the city for a moment, the sparkling lights of night covering a multitude of unpleasant daytime vistas, before Talitha interrupted the silence. "Well that's new," she observed, indicating a part of the terrace extending beyond the living room to the corner of the building. "When did you decide to landscape?" she asked.

The paving stones ended with steps down into the spacious sunken corner, a secret garden in the sky where ferns and various bushes bordered a square patch of… lawn. "Just recently," Richard replied. "Someone told me that stone terraces can't compare to grass."

Mary bit her lip to contain the smile that threatened to take over her neutral expression. She was so used to being listened to, yet so unaccustomed to being heard. But Richard heard to her. He remembered what she said because it meant something to him; not only that, he acted on the proclamations she had not even realized she made.

"I hardly see the point all the way up on the fourteenth floor," Lady Ashby said with a dismissive shake of her head. "Come, John, I'm going to show you the exact bookcases I plan to install. That is if Richard doesn't mind us copying him."

"I doubt he could stop you if he wanted to," John called out as he followed her back inside.

Mary walked down to the second terrace and stooped to run her hand over the grass, as if she was unsure if it was real or not. Their conversation had been only a week before, but in that short amount of time Richard had found someone to work out the mechanics of growing a miniature country garden on a penthouse roof in the middle of London. She could scarcely believe it, but the cool blades that prickled against her fingers and the slight dew that caught on her hands was irrefutable proof. She brushed off the moisture on her gown, murmuring, "I can't believe you can have this up here."

"That's what the gardeners said. But it's been done in New York, on rooftops higher than this," Richard said as he sat down on one of the flagstone steps at the edge of the lawn, indicating for her to join him. She sat beside him and looked ahead, the city stretched out before them, the distant lights bathing them in a faint yellow glow and sparkling off the intricate beadwork of her dress.

"It's almost vertiginous," Mary commented at the view from such a height.

"I prefer it," Richard said. "Better to be looking down on the city than the city looking down on me."

"In the country, there's nothing but trees and birds to look down on you," she said lightly, though she was strangely keen to convince him of the merits of her lifestyle as he was to convince her of his.

"And plenty of Crawleys," he teased, the lines of his eyes crinkling in jest.

"Only most Crawleys," she allowed with a smile of her own.

"There's only one whose opinion I care about." Their arms were touching and he ran his hand down the length of her evening glove; she could not contain a shudder and hoped he attributed it to the slight chill in the air. "So what do you think?" he asked as his hand cradled her wrist, his thumb running over the delicate bone. "Could you call an apartment home?"

She hesitated slightly, looking out across the city and deciding exactly what tack to take. "That depends entirely on the other occupant," she said finally. "If he happens to be a whiskey distiller, I think not."

Richard laughed at this; she liked it when she made him laugh. It was a good-natured laugh, free of the mocking tones he sometimes employed when they were discussing the failings of others, as they often did. "And a newspaper man?"

"That's a different story," she allowed, not quite able to admit that at that moment, she could easily call this place – and him – home.

He looked at her intently in the dim light, before seemingly deciding to press on. "Can I take that as an answer to my question?" he asked, and he was not referring to her opinion of apartments. They both knew what this evening was really about, and Mary had been deliberately vague, but he was always direct when she was at her most evasive.

So she took a deep breath, the scent of the fresh grass filling her lungs and driving out the fumes of the city, and resolved that the time for evasion was over. "Yes, you can."

It felt good to say aloud, at last, after she had kept him waiting for months; after she had put her own life on hold, struggling to own up to the decision. It felt good to sit so close to him. And it felt good to know he wished them to be even closer, she thought to herself as he tugged her wrist gently to draw her to him. So she let herself rest her head on his shoulder, despite the boldness of the move, and looked out at the city with a surprising sense of relief, certain that the flickering lights in the distance were just a painted backdrop installed exclusively for them, placed there to foster the illusion that anything was possible. "Anyone who can grow grass on the roof is ingenious enough to win my heart," she added.

"In that case," Richard answered as he placed a kiss on her hair, "you may find yourself walking down the aisle with the gardener."

* * *

She had been hopeful then; yes, hopeful was the right word. About Richard, about London. It all seemed like an adventure. Maybe not one she would have designed for herself, but now that it was presented to her, the path was alluring and new. That was before the realities of war intruded on her life, before the possibility of Matthew being gone forever was an actual threat, before Haxby and scandal and blackmail and the rest.

She had been happy, sitting next to her newspaperman on that roof so long ago, the chaperones off examining the construction methods of bookcases and Richard kissing her, properly, for the first time, in the dark. They had been happy. And now, standing in the hallway of her new home in the middle of the night, watching the same lights still flickering away in the distance, Mary knew they could be again.


End file.
